Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) Environmental Fellows Program 2025 (up to $90,000)

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About Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) Environmental Fellows Program

The Harvard University Center for the Environment created the Environmental Fellows program to enable recent doctorate recipients to use and expand Harvard's extraordinary resources to tackle complex environmental problems. The Environmental Fellows will work for two years with Harvard faculty members in any school or department while also strengthening connections across the University's academic disciplines.

The Harvard University Center for the Environment expects to award approximately six fellowships for the 2025 cohort. The Center will organize a co-curricular program to ensure that the fellows get to know each other and each other's work. All fellows will attend biweekly dinners with their colleagues, faculty members, and guests.

• School: Harvard University

Benefits of Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) Environmental Fellows Program

The fellowship includes a salary of $90,000 per year, employee health insurance eligibility, up to $2,500 reimbursement for relocation expenses, and a $2,500 annual allowance for travel and other professional expenses. 

Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) Environmental Fellows Program Requirements

The Environmental Fellows Program is open to anyone with a doctorate or comparable terminal degree awarded between May 2021 and August 2025. HUCE expects to award approximately six fellowships for the 2025 cohort. 

HUCE organizes a co-curricular program to ensure that the fellows get to know each other and each other’s work. All fellows join in biweekly dinners along with Harvard faculty and a speaker from amongst the Harvard faculty.

Selection Criteria:

• Applicant’s prior academic and professional success and their potential contribution to scholarship or practice
  • Project proposals are carefully evaluated by a committee of HUCE faculty. The proposed project should represent an independent line of inquiry, clearly extending beyond the candidate’s PhD work as well as the host’s ongoing research. The relevance of the proposed work for addressing environmental issues, along with demonstration of excellent potential for intellectual achievement, are critical factors in the selection process.  
• The selection committee will select a group of fellows in 2025 who will complement those selected last year, creating a group of approximately a dozen scholars with a diverse set of academic interests, skills, and backgrounds. Recipients—and hosts—may include people with degrees in the sciences, economics, law, government, public policy, public health, medicine, design, and the full array of humanities. Their research topics will be equally varied.
• Harvard candidates: those receiving terminal degrees from Harvard and post-docs currently working at Harvard are eligible for the fellowship provided their research and host arrangements take them in new directions that are significantly distinct from their PhD research and forge new connections within the University. Harvard candidates should not propose to continue to work with the same professors or groups with whom they are currently associated, nor should their proposal be an extenuation of their current work.
• Interdisciplinary research projects are encouraged, although this is not a requirement for the fellowship, and candidates with interests in a single discipline are also encouraged to apply.
• Host’s commitment: Further important considerations are the host faculty member’s enthusiasm for the proposed project and fellow, the host’s ability to mentor the fellow, and their ability to provide office space and a productive work environment.
• Interview: A select group of applicants will be asked to further discuss their proposal over video with the selection committee.

​​​​Finding a Host:

Potential candidates should start early to identify and establish a relationship with a Harvard faculty member to host their research. The host will be a mentor to the fellow and will provide office space and basic administrative support. In agreeing to be a host, the faculty member is making a significant commitment.

Successful candidates will be enthusiastically recommended by their proposed host. Each applicant’s host must submit a letter of support (maximum of two pages) to the selection committee describing in detail the level of commitment to the research and the candidate. Often Harvard faculty members are approached by many would-be applicants. Some faculty members conduct their own selection process to identify one or two applicants for recommendation to the selection committee.

Applicants unfamiliar with Harvard faculty members will find many potential hosts, though far from all, listed on HUCE’s web pages organized both by academic areas topics. See faculty member’s own web pages for more detailed information regarding publications and interests. Any faculty member from any discipline may potentially serve as a host, regardless of whether the host has had prior experience with environmental research or HUCE. Faculty members hosting 2024 fellows are not eligible for hosting additional fellows in 2025. This includes Frank Keutsch, Boris Kozinsky, Mark C. Elliott, and Eli Tziperman.

Some applicants may also be interested in the Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship based at the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. Global Change Fellows will be a part of the Environmental Fellows cohort at HUCE starting in September 2023. More information on that program can be found on the Arboretum's website.

Note: The Department of the History of Science has a deadline of November 1st for all sponsor requests.

Please direct any questions to Jim Clem, HUCE Managing Director, at [email protected].

Application Date and Process

1. Complete the online application form by January 13, 2025 at 5 p.m. (ET) and attach the relevant supporting documents as PDFs:

• curriculum vitae including list of publications;
• detailed research proposal where applicants should explain their specific reasons for applying to a Harvard residential environmental fellowship (maximum of five pages, references counted separately).
  Note: While applicants should discuss the proposal with their potential faculty hosts, the final product should clearly be the work of the applicant; and
• up to three publications/writing samples.

2. Three letters of reference, including one from the applicant's dissertation adviser. NOTE: The ARleS application system will only send recommendation letter requests via email after the application has been officially submitted. Be in touch with your recommenders in advance so that they can quickly upload their letters after they receive the link. It only takes a few minutes for them to do so. Recommenders will have extra time after the deadline (January 23, 2025) to submit letters.

3. A letter of support is also required from the applicant's host committing to serve as a mentor and explaining his or her commitment to the proposed research, including the provision of office or lab space. Applicants are encouraged to ask their hosts to email letters of reference as PDFs or, if necessary, as Word documents attached to the emails. Hosts also have extra time after the deadline (January 23, 2025) to submit letters and should send them directly to the attention of Cayla Jett at the Center at [email protected].

Click on the link to the application website to get started.

Application Deadline

13 January, 2025

Scholarship Application Portal

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